Miss Carmine's Correctional Services.
Miss Carmine's Ladies' Correctional Services.
After a long and involved process my new novel is here at last. The delay in the release of this latest offering is not through any laziness or lack of application but rather through the complexities of writing such an ambitious story. I think this was probably my most demanding project since I wrote “Toggenburg”. In some respects it was even more tasking if only for the amount of research involved. I most likely spent more time in research than I did in the actual writing. The reason for this was that this novel is set in the past.
I had wanted to try my hand at a historical novel for a long time. I had penned a number of historical short stories previously and, as a historian, a considerable amount of historical non-fiction but never had the courage to take on a full novel set in a historical period. This posed a whole new set of problems not least of which was my geekish obsession with historical accuracy. Whatever else you might say about the novel, there is no denying that it goes to extraordinary lengths to remain true to the historical record.
And what a record it is too. The novel is set, for the most part, in London, in the year 1871, at the height of the great Victorian era. It was an extraordinary place in an extraordinary age. It was an age in some ways analogous to our own when changing demographics and bewildering technological innovation were changing the world out of all recognition. Society was changing at a rate unequalled in human history. At the beginning of the 19th century, Britain was essentially a rural agrarian society of some ten million people. By the end of it, it was an urbanised industrial nation of over 40 million.
I had long lamented the fact that so many novels set in the Victorian era were either tales set amidst the Victorian gentry and filled with worn clichés of Victorian prudishness or were some sort of dark Dickensian doom and gloom full of blighted cotton mills, workhouses and frightful coal mines. I wanted to approach the age from a different angle; one which depicted the Victorian age as a thrilling age of scientific breakthroughs, technical innovation and enormous social change. In 1800 it took four days to travel from London to York. By 1900 it took four hours. In 1800 only about 50% of the population could read or write at all and the percentage was even less for women. By 1900 literacy for both genders was as near 100% as made no difference. In 1800 communications around the world were determined by the speed of a horse or a sailing ship. By the 1870s you could dictate a message in London and have it read the same day in New York or Delhi. It was an age of miracles.
Moreover it was an era in which technology was directly impacting upon daily life and consumer goods. I really wanted to show this aspect for many of the changes occurring might seem surprising to us today. These were things we take for granted now but were startlingly new at the time. For instance, several scenes in the novel take place in my heroine, Cassandra's, bathroom. That in itself was remarkable. In 1871 custom designed rooms for bathing and toiletry were very new innovations and only to be found in the most modern of urban residences. The bathroom itself was a combination of technical advances, including piped water, new plumbing techniques, internal water heating boilers and even flushable lavatories. Even the products within the bathroom were hitherto unknown consumer commodities such as industrially produced toilet soaps, imported sponges, new pharmaceutical products and even, as a new innovation of the textile industry, soft towels. The bathroom was lit by gas lamps; another new domestic introduction.
Throughout Cassandra's house the same theme of innovative change continues. On her desk is a fountain pen. It may seem small thing, and largely obsolete now, but the fountain pen transformed society. Prior to to this writing anything had been a laborious task involving a quill and ink bottle. The technical combination of ebonised rubber, mass production in metallurgy for the manufacture of nibs and the chemical industry's invention of non corrosive free flowing inks produced cheap fountain pens available to every clerk and household. More people were writing than ever before in history with profound consequences for universal literacy. On a darker note, were you to look in Cassandra's desk drawer, you might come upon a Webley .442 calibre six shot revolver; a weapon that had revolutionised the design of firearms. George Custer would carry one to ignominious defeat at Little Big Horn.
So yes it was an exciting age and one it was a lot of fun to write about. I think the Victorian age is so fascinating to us because we can see the genesis of the world in which we live in today emerging from it. It is in that period that we can truly see the formation of the modern world and it is why I tried to embellish my story with such rich detail of the age. You might argue that the average reader might have little interest in the origin of Peek Frean's Garibaldi biscuits or the dyes used in Cassandra's underwear. It may be that the technological marvels of the Great Western Railway or the provisions of the “Married Women's Property Act” of 1870 seem to be superfluous to the story. I have always thought of my stories as just a scenario within a greater meta-story however. In many ways, Cassandra's tale is the story of the great Victorian era. Hers is just a small part of one of the most exciting tales in history and I wanted to paint her into the greater picture of the age in which she lived.
In the story, Cassandra Carmine runs her “Ladies Correctional Service” from a big house in London's fashionably up market Belgravia. Cassandra is one of my most unforgettable characters; a strikingly beautiful unmarried woman in her mid thirties and self made entrepreneur; rich, highly educated, thoroughly modern and at the cutting edge of fashion and social thought. She acts as a dominatrix for the rich and noble ladies of Belgravia and London high society while maintaining her thoroughly entertaining household of servants. Her housekeeper, Alice, is an ex-slave from a South Carolina cotton plantation and her personal maid is a cheerful, if occasionally bloodthirsty, Cockney lass called Molly. There is also her stubbornly English cook, her old gardener and a gaggle of gregarious young maids of shady backgrounds whose mischief keeps Cassandra amused and require frequent spankings to keep in line. It's a happy household and, if it is not exactly the most respectable domicile in Belgravia, it is also by no means the dullest!
Britain is currently at peace in 1871 but such peace is not, by any stretch of the imagination, universal in Europe at this time. Indeed a series of nationalistic wars have changed the face of the continent. This has culminated the year before in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 which has seen the catastrophic defeat of France and the emergence of the newly created German Empire giving rise to the nationalist tensions that will lead to the disaster of the Great War in the next century. Britain holds a delicate balancing position in this new European order. The deposed Emperor Napoleon III is in exile in England while Britain's royal family is closely allied to the Prussian House of Hohenzollern. Indeed Queen Victoria's eldest daughter is married to the heir to the German Empire. Naturally Her Majesty's government is eager to maintain neutrality and avoid anything which might cause scandal and umbrage to any of the warring factions.
Cassandra is well aware of the tensions of European politics for, in addition to everything else, she is a spy on behalf of the government through her friendship with a certain Robert Weatherstone of the Foreign Service. It is Robert who embroils her in an affair that drags her right into the heart of international intrigue. She is commissioned to journey to a country house in Wiltshire, ostensibly to discipline a pair of young maids caught red-handed in flagrant and scandalous intimacy with each other. She is to play the part of a strict governess who will punish the two young maids and to take them back with her to London to be boarded in her house under strict discipline with a view to correcting their behaviour.
In reality the whole scheme is a sham. One of the young maids is a German girl and, en route to London, she is to be substituted for another German girl who is to be smuggled out of Wiltshire and hidden in Cassandra's home. There are very good reasons for this. The teenage girl is a refugee from the last war and one with a very dark past. She harbours a secret which could bring scandal down on two of the most important royal houses in Europe and her very existence could threaten the political stability of the continent. It is imperative for her to be hidden out of sight.
The story then revolves around Cassandra's involvement in this affair and the coming of this young woman into her household. I will give no more away but suffice it to say that it is a story of drama and deep passion rooted in historical fact and the young girl's secret turns out to be even more explosive than even Cassandra had feared.
In conclusion, the story has all the hallmarks of my usual style; drama, sexuality, romance, humour, unforgettable characters and heart warming domesticity set against the rich tapestry of a truly remarkable age. I hope I have managed to bring that age to life and to have crafted a story which will linger on in the heart and imagination.
Michaela xxxxx
p.s, The novel is available as ebook (soon I hope also in paperback) at this site;
a1adultebooks.com
After a long and involved process my new novel is here at last. The delay in the release of this latest offering is not through any laziness or lack of application but rather through the complexities of writing such an ambitious story. I think this was probably my most demanding project since I wrote “Toggenburg”. In some respects it was even more tasking if only for the amount of research involved. I most likely spent more time in research than I did in the actual writing. The reason for this was that this novel is set in the past.
I had wanted to try my hand at a historical novel for a long time. I had penned a number of historical short stories previously and, as a historian, a considerable amount of historical non-fiction but never had the courage to take on a full novel set in a historical period. This posed a whole new set of problems not least of which was my geekish obsession with historical accuracy. Whatever else you might say about the novel, there is no denying that it goes to extraordinary lengths to remain true to the historical record.
And what a record it is too. The novel is set, for the most part, in London, in the year 1871, at the height of the great Victorian era. It was an extraordinary place in an extraordinary age. It was an age in some ways analogous to our own when changing demographics and bewildering technological innovation were changing the world out of all recognition. Society was changing at a rate unequalled in human history. At the beginning of the 19th century, Britain was essentially a rural agrarian society of some ten million people. By the end of it, it was an urbanised industrial nation of over 40 million.
I had long lamented the fact that so many novels set in the Victorian era were either tales set amidst the Victorian gentry and filled with worn clichés of Victorian prudishness or were some sort of dark Dickensian doom and gloom full of blighted cotton mills, workhouses and frightful coal mines. I wanted to approach the age from a different angle; one which depicted the Victorian age as a thrilling age of scientific breakthroughs, technical innovation and enormous social change. In 1800 it took four days to travel from London to York. By 1900 it took four hours. In 1800 only about 50% of the population could read or write at all and the percentage was even less for women. By 1900 literacy for both genders was as near 100% as made no difference. In 1800 communications around the world were determined by the speed of a horse or a sailing ship. By the 1870s you could dictate a message in London and have it read the same day in New York or Delhi. It was an age of miracles.
Moreover it was an era in which technology was directly impacting upon daily life and consumer goods. I really wanted to show this aspect for many of the changes occurring might seem surprising to us today. These were things we take for granted now but were startlingly new at the time. For instance, several scenes in the novel take place in my heroine, Cassandra's, bathroom. That in itself was remarkable. In 1871 custom designed rooms for bathing and toiletry were very new innovations and only to be found in the most modern of urban residences. The bathroom itself was a combination of technical advances, including piped water, new plumbing techniques, internal water heating boilers and even flushable lavatories. Even the products within the bathroom were hitherto unknown consumer commodities such as industrially produced toilet soaps, imported sponges, new pharmaceutical products and even, as a new innovation of the textile industry, soft towels. The bathroom was lit by gas lamps; another new domestic introduction.
Throughout Cassandra's house the same theme of innovative change continues. On her desk is a fountain pen. It may seem small thing, and largely obsolete now, but the fountain pen transformed society. Prior to to this writing anything had been a laborious task involving a quill and ink bottle. The technical combination of ebonised rubber, mass production in metallurgy for the manufacture of nibs and the chemical industry's invention of non corrosive free flowing inks produced cheap fountain pens available to every clerk and household. More people were writing than ever before in history with profound consequences for universal literacy. On a darker note, were you to look in Cassandra's desk drawer, you might come upon a Webley .442 calibre six shot revolver; a weapon that had revolutionised the design of firearms. George Custer would carry one to ignominious defeat at Little Big Horn.
So yes it was an exciting age and one it was a lot of fun to write about. I think the Victorian age is so fascinating to us because we can see the genesis of the world in which we live in today emerging from it. It is in that period that we can truly see the formation of the modern world and it is why I tried to embellish my story with such rich detail of the age. You might argue that the average reader might have little interest in the origin of Peek Frean's Garibaldi biscuits or the dyes used in Cassandra's underwear. It may be that the technological marvels of the Great Western Railway or the provisions of the “Married Women's Property Act” of 1870 seem to be superfluous to the story. I have always thought of my stories as just a scenario within a greater meta-story however. In many ways, Cassandra's tale is the story of the great Victorian era. Hers is just a small part of one of the most exciting tales in history and I wanted to paint her into the greater picture of the age in which she lived.
In the story, Cassandra Carmine runs her “Ladies Correctional Service” from a big house in London's fashionably up market Belgravia. Cassandra is one of my most unforgettable characters; a strikingly beautiful unmarried woman in her mid thirties and self made entrepreneur; rich, highly educated, thoroughly modern and at the cutting edge of fashion and social thought. She acts as a dominatrix for the rich and noble ladies of Belgravia and London high society while maintaining her thoroughly entertaining household of servants. Her housekeeper, Alice, is an ex-slave from a South Carolina cotton plantation and her personal maid is a cheerful, if occasionally bloodthirsty, Cockney lass called Molly. There is also her stubbornly English cook, her old gardener and a gaggle of gregarious young maids of shady backgrounds whose mischief keeps Cassandra amused and require frequent spankings to keep in line. It's a happy household and, if it is not exactly the most respectable domicile in Belgravia, it is also by no means the dullest!
Britain is currently at peace in 1871 but such peace is not, by any stretch of the imagination, universal in Europe at this time. Indeed a series of nationalistic wars have changed the face of the continent. This has culminated the year before in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 which has seen the catastrophic defeat of France and the emergence of the newly created German Empire giving rise to the nationalist tensions that will lead to the disaster of the Great War in the next century. Britain holds a delicate balancing position in this new European order. The deposed Emperor Napoleon III is in exile in England while Britain's royal family is closely allied to the Prussian House of Hohenzollern. Indeed Queen Victoria's eldest daughter is married to the heir to the German Empire. Naturally Her Majesty's government is eager to maintain neutrality and avoid anything which might cause scandal and umbrage to any of the warring factions.
Cassandra is well aware of the tensions of European politics for, in addition to everything else, she is a spy on behalf of the government through her friendship with a certain Robert Weatherstone of the Foreign Service. It is Robert who embroils her in an affair that drags her right into the heart of international intrigue. She is commissioned to journey to a country house in Wiltshire, ostensibly to discipline a pair of young maids caught red-handed in flagrant and scandalous intimacy with each other. She is to play the part of a strict governess who will punish the two young maids and to take them back with her to London to be boarded in her house under strict discipline with a view to correcting their behaviour.
In reality the whole scheme is a sham. One of the young maids is a German girl and, en route to London, she is to be substituted for another German girl who is to be smuggled out of Wiltshire and hidden in Cassandra's home. There are very good reasons for this. The teenage girl is a refugee from the last war and one with a very dark past. She harbours a secret which could bring scandal down on two of the most important royal houses in Europe and her very existence could threaten the political stability of the continent. It is imperative for her to be hidden out of sight.
The story then revolves around Cassandra's involvement in this affair and the coming of this young woman into her household. I will give no more away but suffice it to say that it is a story of drama and deep passion rooted in historical fact and the young girl's secret turns out to be even more explosive than even Cassandra had feared.
In conclusion, the story has all the hallmarks of my usual style; drama, sexuality, romance, humour, unforgettable characters and heart warming domesticity set against the rich tapestry of a truly remarkable age. I hope I have managed to bring that age to life and to have crafted a story which will linger on in the heart and imagination.
Michaela xxxxx
p.s, The novel is available as ebook (soon I hope also in paperback) at this site;
a1adultebooks.com
7 years ago
https://xhamster.com/posts/690272
Michaela xxxxx
Michaela xxxxx